The Dead And The Gone (3 page)

Alex wasn’t surprised, but he was disappointed. School had always been a safe haven for him, and he’d counted on finding someone there who could give him a better idea of what was going on. Not that he was so sure he really wanted to know.

He turned away from the door, and almost immediately the rain began. Lightning bolts flashed and thunder clapped. He cursed himself for not having brought an umbrella, for going out in the first place. He couldn’t even be sure the subways were running in a blackout.

He walked to the Seventy-second Street station and found a chain across the stairwell. A soaking wet cop stood nearby, watching the ambulances fly down Broadway.

Alex gestured toward the subway station.

“Closed,” the cop said. “The tunnels flooded.”

“Thanks,” Alex said. He wandered what had caused the flooding, but it was raining too hard for conversation. He ran the mile or so back home, and was drenched by the time he got into the apartment.

“School’s closed until Monday,” he said. “Did Mami call?”

Briana shook her head. “Julie went back to bed,” she said. “You’re soaking.”

“Yeah, I know,” Alex said. “I’m going to dry off and go to sleep. Wake me up before Monday, okay?”

Briana laughed. “Go to sleep,” she said. “By the time you wake up, I bet Mami’ll be home and everything will be okay.”

“I bet you’re right,” Alex said, but he knew that was a fairy tale. As he hung up his wet school clothes and changed back into his jeans and T-shirt, he thought about the tunnels flooding. The subway Mami took to Queens went through a tunnel. But that had been last night, and things must have been all right then. Still he knew he wouldn’t feel at peace until they heard from her.

Bed looked very inviting. But first he got down on his knees, made the sign of the cross, and prayed for the safety of his mother and father and brother, for the safety of his sisters, and then for the safety of his country and the world.

God, show us mercy, he prayed. And give me strength.

Only then did he allow himself to escape into sleep.

Friday, May 20

He was awake when his clock began blinking 12:00, 12:00. Alex checked his watch. It was 6:45 am.

He could hear the whir of the refrigerator turning back on, but there were no other sounds in the apartment. Throwing on his robe, he tiptoed into the living room, not wanting to wake Bri or Julie. All the grocery bags scattered around looked ridiculous now, a crazy extravagance during a crazy day.

Alex turned on the TV, lowering the sound as quickly as he could. He sat close to the set, keeping the volume as low as possible so his sisters wouldn’t be disturbed. Only a couple of stations came in, but he wasn’t looking for variety, just information. Both stations were doing news broadcasts, focusing exclusively on the emergency.

On one station the broadcaster was talking about conditions in Europe, but Alex knew that could wait. He switched to the second station. At first that one talked about how things were elsewhere in the United States. No word of survivors on the Carolina barrier islands. Terrible conditions in Cape Cod.

It took about fifteen minutes of terrible news around the country before the newscasters began focusing on New York. Alex sat there, absolutely still, the sound so low he could barely hear. The words and pictures assaulted him anyway. Horrific loss of life. Lower Manhattan decimated. Staten Island, Long Island devastated. Blackouts, looting, riots. Curfew between 8 pm and 6 am. Tides twenty feet tall, sweeping away people, trees, even buildings. Mandatory evacuations. Plane crashes. Countless numbers of people dead in subways and in cars from tunnel flooding.

Alex hadn’t thought about people being on the subways when the flooding first began.

He felt a wave of panic and had to tell himself to calm down. It would be easy enough to find out if Mami was all right. All he had to do was call the hospital and confirm that she was there. Sure, they weren’t supposed to call her at work unless it was an emergency, but they hadn’t heard from her in over twenty-four hours and that was emergency enough.

Mami had the hospital number written on the scratch pad she kept by the phone. Just seeing it comforted him. He picked up the phone, but it was dead.

For an instant he went crazy. The phone was dead because Mami was dead. But then he realized how foolish that was, and he began shaking with silent laughter. No wonder they hadn’t heard from Mami. It was a miracle the phone service had lasted as long as it had, long enough for Papi and Carlos to call.

Alex went back to the TV and switched to the station with all the international news. Their newscaster was interviewing a distinguished-looking scientist about how long it would take before things got back to normal.

“Things may never get back to normal,” the scientist said. “I don’t want to be an alarmist, but I know of nothing humans can do to return the moon to its orbit.”

“But surely there must be something,” the newscaster said. “
NASA
must be working on a solution day and night.”

“Even if they can come up with something, it may take months, even years, before they can implement it,” the scientist replied. “What happened yesterday will be nothing compared to what lies ahead.”

“You’re not suggesting we all panic,” the newscaster said in that calming, don’t-panic voice Alex associated with TV when things were at their worst. “Surely panic is the one thing we shouldn’t do right now.”

Before Alex had a chance to find out what the scientist’s alternative to panic might be, the electricity went out again.

Alex cursed under his breath. No phone, no electricity, two kid sisters depending on him to take care of them until their parents returned. God certainly didn’t want to make things easy for him.

Or for anyone else, he thought. Floods in the subways. Devastation throughout the world. How many people had died in the past two days? Thousands? Millions? How long would it take before Carlos was back at his base? How long before Papi could return from Puerto Rico, before the hospital could let Mami go home?

Stop it, he told himself. You’re starting to sound like Aunt Lorraine. One
dramatica
in a family is enough. No matter how^7 ^bad things were, he couldn’t allow himself to be frightened. Not as long as he was responsible for Briana’s and Julie’s well-being.

Alex went back to his bedroom and picked up his notebook. Knowledge was the enemy of fear. Before every debate he always wrote lists of his argument’s strengths and weaknesses. He’d do the same now.

He made three columns and labeled them: what i know;
WHAT
I THINK;
WHAT
I
DON’T
KNOW
.

Under what i know he wrote:

No subways

Floods

Moon closer to Earth

Carlos all right

Bri and Julie all right

School on Monday

There didn’t seem much point writing down what he’d heard about Europe or Massachusetts. People there could make their own lists.

He bit on his pen and thought. Then he wrote: F
ood in the apartment.

Of course that was assuming Julie had packed things besides mushrooms and candy bars.

But Mami had Wednesdays off, and most likely she’d gone to the supermarket to buy groceries. Alex made a mental note to check the kitchen cabinets, but he doubted there was anything to worry about when it came to food.

He looked at the lists. Under what i don’t know he wrote:
How long it will take for things to get hack to normal.

Apparently no one knew that. But just because no one knew didn’t mean things wouldn’t get back to normal. He might have had the bad luck to catch the only pessimistic scientist on TV.

And, he reminded himself, New York always survived. It had to. The United States, the whole world, couldn’t manage without it. It might take a while, and there might be a lot of politicking involved, but eventually New York bounced back from any misfortune. He lived in the greatest city in the world, and what made it great was its people. He was a Puerto Rican New Yorker, strong by birth and by upbringing.

Puerto Rico. Bri had heard from Papi. He lifted the pen to write
Papi all right in Puerto Rico
under the what i know list until he realized he didn’t really know that at all.

What exactly had Briana said: She’d gotten a phone call, there was a lot of static, she thought she heard a man say, “Puerto Rico,” and she was certain it was Papi.

Papi’s family came from Milagro del Mar, a small town midway between San Juan and Fajardo, on the northern coast of Puerto Rico. When Nana died on Sunday, Alex had been sad, but he really didn’t know her all that well. Then again, Mami’s mother had died before he’d been born and Mami had no contact with her father, so Nana was the last of his grandparents. But that wasn’t reason enough for him to go to Nana’s funeral. Mami couldn’t leave her brand-new job, and Carlos was too far away. So Papi had gone to Puerto Rico on his own, meeting up there with his two brothers and their families in that little town on the coastline.

It might not have been Papi who called. It might have been one of his brothers. Or it might have been a wrong number, someone asking for “Peter or Ricky,” and Bri just assumed the man had said Puerto Rico.

Alex told himself to calm down. Maybe it had been Papi who’d called and maybe it hadn’t. It didn’t matter. There was no reason to assume the worst, but it was safe to say Papi wouldn’t make it home on Saturday, liven if everything miraculously snapped back to place, there’d be long delays, the same as when it snowed and flights got backed up. If New York didn’t have electricity or working phones, neither would San Juan.

The image of a twenty-foot tidal wave flashed through his mind. What defense would Milagro del Mar have against that? Could anyone survive?

He shook his head. It was as dangerous to think about that as to think of tunnels flooding and people drowning in the subways. Until he heard differently, he was going to assume Papi was safe in Puerto Rico and Mami was safe in Queens. He just wouldn’t put anything about them on his list.

Alex stared at the list. He’d written nothing under what i think. The truth was he didn’t want to think. He wanted to wake up to hear Papi cursing him out and Mami defending him and Bri and Julie fighting over who hogged the bathroom worse. He wanted the moon back where it belonged and pessimistic scientists to crawl under rocks. He wanted a full scholarship to Georgetown and summer internships with United States senators. He wanted to be the first president of the United States of Puerto Rican descent.

More than anything, he wanted to know his parents were safe. He couldn’t make himself think “alive and safe.” They had to be alive. They were just gone, that’s all. Papi was gone for Nana’s funeral, and Mami was gone because the hospital needed her. Just gone for the time being, the same as Carlos. Both of them worried about Alex and the girls. Both of them trying to get home.

If the subways were out, Mami would have to get back to Manhattan by bus. With traffic what it was, that could take hours. She wouldn’t like seeing all those bags of food scattered around, though. Alex decided to ask Bri and Julie to put the food away. They knew where things went in the kitchen better than he did.

It would be harder for Papi to get back, but not impossible. Planes would start flying again eventually. Papi could get a bus from the airport to Port Authority and walk the couple of miles uptown if he had to.

Alex looked at his watch and saw if he dressed quickly he had time to make the 8:15 Mass at St. Margaret’s. He thought about waking up Bri and Julie and telling them to go with him, but decided it wouldn’t be worth the chaos. They’d all go on Sunday, maybe Mami, too, and they could pray for Papi’s safe return. But this morning he would go by himself.

He left a note for his sisters, even though they’d probably still be asleep when he got back, and walked to Columbus Avenue, praying for safety as he crossed Broadway, then up the two blocks to the church. The sun was shining brightly, but even so the moon was clearly visible, the way it sometimes was in daylight. Only it was too big. Much too big.

Alex was relieved to find the church open and surprised at the number of people there. More men than he would have assumed would be there, and not all of them old. Many-people had fear in their eyes, and many others were weeping. He was glad he’d left his sisters at home.

He expected the Mass to begin as it always did, but instead Father Franco said he had some announcements to make. Alex could see that he was reading from a sheet of paper. That reassured him. As long as lists were being made, there was order in the world.

“The mayor’s office and the archdiocese’s office are in constant communication,” Father Franco began. “Whenever the archdiocese learns something, it will inform the parish priests so that we can inform our congregants.” He looked up for a moment and then smiled. “A whole new reason to go to Mass on weekdays,” he said.

There was a ripple of nervous laughter.

“Very well,” Father Franco said. “We’ve been told the subways are not yet back in service and bus service is severely restricted, so unless your work is essential to the survival of the community, you’re requested to stay within walking distance of your home. No driving except for emergencies. There is a city-wide curfew from eight pm to six am.” He looked up again. “These rules may seem draconian,” he said, “but as I’m sure you understand, these are very difficult times. Now I know you’ve been wondering about electricity. They’re hoping to have most of Manhattan back on line by Monday.”

“No electricity all weekend?” a man called out from the back.

“All the municipal services are doing what they can under tremendously difficult circumstances,” Father Franco said. “The outages are nationwide.”

“What about the phones?” a woman asked.

Father Franco consulted his list. “There’s no time frame for return of phone service,” he said. “Again, these are national problems. Most of the communication satellites have crashed. Let’s see, what else. Airports remain closed until further notice. No decision has been made about when the public and parochial schools will reopen.” He looked up again. “We’ll use our bulletin board to post any information we receive from the archdiocese, so be sure to check that daily. All the churches are running short staffed. I’m sure you can understand why. But the archdiocese has declared that all its churches will be open from six am to eight pm. There may not be a priest available, but Christ, our savior, will hear your prayers.”